Break the Universe

We will need to break the patterns of the universe if we can, she says. And you know, god being a dead woman, won't mind.

we love to see it break.

she says, they love to see them break. and we are her and we are them. and we love. we lovewelovewelovewelovewelovewelovewelovetoseeitbreak 

 

in a handful of everything

what do you hold

i went out my whole life betting on a type 

of love

i've never known 

mine the fallow banks

deep fissures where i stored i

set down for safe keeping 

forgot how to be what type of person 

there's no difference between a word

and a want, the edge of your face skinned 

& an alphabet cloaking sound 

the dark matter of the poem 

In its flight from death, the craving from permanence clings to the very things sure to be lost in death. 

-H. Arendt  

 

"Live Art"

"Losing control is the worst thing that can happen."

"I never saw a host of angels mowing down my lawn. I don't even have a lawn. 

It just seems like I do sometimes." 

-Laurie Anderson

"Live Art" 

an angel will destroy you. 

and call it love because that's all it knows. 

an angel fits into a glove

an angel fits into a shoe

the voice inside me sd: i am older than love 

    what you seek at the end of the great tap root, always hungry, love concepts

sieves the heart, who wrote its coding, & i am. 

                    assigned a task. a mapping, could fold wings down 

travel so deep. you will keep: 

  what is older than love, i was designed to get close enough to call back

inside sound. 

aware & unaware of the plurality. 

                    i was not pretending

madness. i was not performing 

        (of course, i was performing) i went intothecracks

in thru the breaking, you have to mine: light meets light in the darkness 

to say i was a poem, & so fly 

dissociated inside the puzzle, you can solve a maze from above

watch me 

because she could not rewrite 

            the entire story, i wanted to throw

                                                                 it all away 

 i was so ashamed of my mind 

     i was so in love  (terrible&brilliant) i... i was trying 

to not be infection:  (you can't talk to the echthroi that long, tell her) 

they say angels are notorious liars. 

it's when i can't feel the words i am saying: language plummets

it all hits the same

inside the dreaming of can we survive

& i did not: i watched her die

i saw them bury her

 i stretched out that last breath into 6 years so thin i could see: make me believe 

              be a door. transit a sacrifice you can't touch here. 

do you exist when i close my eyes. i call out in the dreaming & i'll come, he says. 

the point is: you made something beautiful. hold on. 

 you made something beautiful - tell me how you could lose a miracle

the best thing i ever did in my life was i built a net

i knew i wasn't safe alone. so i built a net of people 

                                 who could choose to hold this. 

 there is nothing easy about holding a person 

              don't kid yourself: there is nothing easy about holding a person 

if a person is easy to hold, then question why your hands are so light. 

for we get away with secrets, for we lie & lie 

but none of us get out just being "easy" 

i would never trade madness for easy, i would never trade 

being touched for happy, 

in the sound experiment of being human: I watched you all 

make yourself small for love. 

i do it too. we think maybe no one will notice, i don' t belong here. 

            where love would have bloomed, i addict control. and the flow

  

was sound, i was that wilderness, what draws and repels

the cannot tame. somehow i created the perfect life: 

no one can touch me, the bargain i made to stay safe. 

an angel will destroy you. 

and call it love because it’s all there is.

Frozen States

Frozen States

how'd you get so desperate/ how'd you stay alive -C. Love 

woke up with a fist in my throat
scrape rage but thinned time, it fast
lingers, i lost the grip, my tongue
a grotto
     of bartering, you want this life, you want this life
 ask anyone passing by, what a joke, what an eternal mourning
          take pills to feel the only love that touches

     [redacted]  came up                        [what i am owed]

     & don't think we haven't recorded
     
 how am i still here                how am i still here
         
          was the refrain from under:: it was stardust they pulled
     out my mouth,   i was frost bit, no one wants to photograph
          a girl who can't [pose]         she's not doll      [en__gh]

    you'll never be able to hold that g a z e 

        every one knows if you can't be beautiful & you can't
          [ be horrific ]       horror show this waste
 of living            it wears your face

      4 seconds:: i was touch-down, deep stasis::
      & when i came back             [redacted]

some parts never will, i couldn't get warm,
they piled the blankets around me, a smothering
& i sd: the dead take up space inside
   [no one listens to hysterics]    don't say it's up to me 

            i was hyperthermic      dead zone  where i traveled

            b/c i knew i could          i can do anything         [out there]  

           it's nothing. i keep saying angel, what i mean is terror. no 

           one is listening to me. i keep saying words & they say she's a poem

          what a beauty. what a trilling. death hung on my hands and feet

          i was so numb. there is nothing out there. & it is cold. the light of light
   
          darkens. bone shivered      there is no way for sound to carry. so quick

the silence is us. so quick.

  the truth is this:

     no one will ever reach for you

      not like a dreaming, a place you cannot shore
      when you island loss
         creep from death parent to lesser cues

every poem was a mirror i held up

             

                & i wait               i'm afraid it won't lead me anywhere

                 
                 we call her       [             ]   kneel into the frozen lights 

                 useless as a song, useless as a memory, useless as __________
                 how could i still be here.... when every code i wrote was the same

i am lost & the maps, torn to shreds. the way
home insides me, i would go there now
but the children sweetly gather, the dog snores
the sun rises in the city i have only ever known
look at me, i have failed at everything.

     i have failed at everything.

     i ever wanted in this life           no matter for the cold here is nothing

     the cold out there.           endless. is what waits.

 



     
     


       

                       
             

Collaborative Failure: Art & Intimacy

This is a generative post to what I want to eventually talk about at some length, which is collaborative failure or when collaborations fail or how collaborations fail.

I thought I would generate a bunch of corners to back into and then precede:

Does the artist choose collaborations that they know will be successful
or do collaborations that fail just disappear and not garner attention? Where do we see failed collaborations?

What does failure look like?

Is collaboration always a desire for intimacy? How does collaboration create a space for intimacy not relegated in other parts of our lives (as artists, as people)? Is the collaborative space a dangerous space?

Who decides?

When collaborations fail are they the failure of the two (or more) artists or the constraints or a problem of intimacy?

When is a collaboration not a collaboration?

& also if the working relationship works but the outcome of the work suffers
(if you write with someone & it fails what does that say about the relationship)

What if the collaboration is successful, but the relationship of the artists is not? What is a failure of intimacy in the midst of collaboration?

Where do we learn from failure vs. the breaking apart of communion?

Is it a failure to allow another into your space? (who are people that don't collaborate?)

Can collaboration succeed?

Can we argue that all collaborations are failures in their inability to cohere?

Or do they all succeed by their acceptance of opening up to the potential for failure?

Collaboration as the greatest source for potential failure/ how does this mimic intimacy?

If a collaboration fails, who takes the blame or Is collaboration inevitable?

At what levels, do we consider something a collaboration? Why are we more comfortable with failure in art and less so in our real lives? What is at stake to embracing daily failure in life?

Are we collaborating with the audience? As a medium, does poetry lend itself more readily to failure?

(Special thanks to poets Kristin Sanders, Ben Kopel, Lisa Pasold and Anne Boyer for discussions and thoughts generated about art & failure)

You can email me at: meganaburns@aol.com if you have any answers/ questions to add or comment below.